Britain Is The ‘Most Internet-Based Major Economy’

The internet contributes to 8.3% of the UK economy, a significantly bigger share than any of the other major countries in G20. This has made the country's internet economy outgrow the healthcare, education and construction sectors.

According to a study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the UK's online commerce was worth £121bn in 2010, which equates to more than £2,000 per person. It's also been documented that Brits also indulge in more only retail shopping than any other major economical power: 13.5% of all purchases being done this way in the aforementioned 2010.

The predictions being made by BCG are for the web economy to grow to an exponential £221bn by 2016, and for just over 1 in every 5 purchases to be transacted online (23% to be exact).

Perhaps more disconcerting is their analysis into just how much of a sentimental bond we have with the internet. 65% would give up alcohol for it, 76% chocolate, 78% coffee, and a quarter said they would consider giving up sex for a year to maintain a good broadband connection.

So what we know is that Britain is taking to an online economy faster than people expected, and our preferences for sex are slowly waning away in the face of a good T1 connection.

Six million people in Britain are still not using the internet

It seems insane to think that every adult doesn't have at least one way to access to the internet - but according to a survey Office for National Statistics, 11 percent of the adult population don't. That means 5.9 million people have never used the internet.

Infographic: A Break Down Of The Internet In A Day

The internet is vast. It is a constantly changing landscape of GIFs and cats, which will make our future generations severely question our levels of productivity (blame Reddit). But what exactly happens in a single day on the web? How much content is created and shared in this enormous virtual space? The team at internetserviceproviders.org investigated and produced this rather nifty infographic about it.

Just How Big A Portion Of The Internet Does Porn Take Up?

Porn is literally everywhere on the internet. Look no further than targeted explicit advertisements that seem to adorn what seems to be every other page, the healthy amount of X-rated content on popular video-sharing sites like Dailymotion and Metacafe, the streams of birthday suit-clad models filtering through nearly every online forum known to man. And that's not even taking into account the porn websites themselves. But how much porn does the internet actually hold? It was a question technology website ExtremeTech simply had to find out, and one that we can do nothing but share. The reality will blow you away.

Behold The Scrollable, Zoomable 2D ‘Map’ Of The Internet

Though it might at first glance appear to be a colourfully-drawn visualisation of our solar system, the above image has in fact been created by Russian technology firm Positive Communications and is a fully-interactive 2D ‘map’ of the Internet. It’s one in which each circle is a unique website, and each ‘cluster’ of entities are site’s with a similar connection; be it videogames, technology, global news, or popular search results.